Advertisement

Dr Hazel Amuah
Dr Hazel Amuah

10 Skills to safeguard your job beyond 2020

The World Economic Forum recently listed 10 critical skills and attributes that everybody will need to find a job or further their careers from 2020 and beyond. In their estimation, without these skills and attributes, you are finished.

What do these skills or attributes mean? How are they measured? Is your education preparing you for them? And what do you have to do to ensure that you catch up in case you have been left behind?

Read Also: UEW to employ 121 new staff.

These are the questions that the Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy FM, sought to answer in the past four weeks.

The show, which is hosted by Rev. Albert Ocran, had the Human Resource Manager of Old Mutual Life Insurance, Dr Hazel Amuah, and the Head of Human Resource at CAL Bank, Mr Samuel Boafo, who helped explore the forum’s report.

Mr Boafo said: “We should take the report seriously because it is something that was born out of research and looking at the background of the respondents for the research, these are people who know their craft so for them to come out with these definitive skills is an indication of how critical these skills are.”

He said the skills that were outlined by the report were skills that anybody who was working with people would need to succeed.

The 10 skills listed in the report

1. Cognitive flexibility

2. Negotiations skills

3. Service orientation

4. Judgement and decision making

5. Emotional intelligence

6. Coordinating with others

7. People management

8. Creativity

9. Critical thinking

10. Complex problem solving

People management

Mr Boafo cited people management as the most critical skill among them, stating that “from my own experience, I will place people management as the most important among the ten skills.”

“From the way leaders are picked and how businesses are run, I think efforts and attention have focused on the bottom line which is results, while people management has been neglected or given little attention,” he noted.

“So you find most managers paying more attention to the core targets and devote little time to team planning and how to manage people to get the best out of the them,” he added.

He noted that people management had been relegated to just one aspect which was performance appraisal while development had been left out.

“So for people, the idea of managing the team they work with is all about appraisal. We have a regulatory and regimental approach to people management rather than a developmental approach. We have become too regimented in the way we view people that we work with,” he explained.

He, therefore, urged heads of organisations to periodically meet with their members and look at how they could help each member to meet his or her targets.

Emotional intelligence

Dr Hazel Amuah rated emotional intelligence as the most critical skill in every organisation.

“Essentially, the most important one is emotional intelligence because without it, you cannot work with people in the 21st century. Without emotional intelligence, it is so difficult for you to coordinate and work with people or for you to trigger a sense of critical thinking among them,” she stated.

“If you look at emotional intelligence, it talks about how a person responds, communicates, shows empathy, shows patience and tolerance towards other people and for you to effectively manage people, you must have emotional intelligence to be able to understand and be patient with them,” she indicated.

She added that “if you are not able to emotionally connect with somebody by being empathetic, tolerant and patient and fair, how do you manage the person well to get the best performance.”

She said for one to have a realistic approach to people management, it required emotional intelligence.“Emotional intelligence is the fundamental skill every manager should have as prior skill ahead of all the other skills.

You need emotional intelligence to master all the other skills but essentially you need all of these skills to succeed in today’s market regardless of what you’re doing,” she added.

Dr Amuah advised students to start nurturing some of these skills right from school in order to fit into the job market when they complete.

“Most of the time, the people who apply for work are people who are coming straight from school but these skills can be nurtured through their schools, their upbringing at home, the people they connect with and the books they read,” she noted.

“I will, therefore, encourage young people applying for jobs to begin developing these skills themselves,” she added.

Mr Boafo, for his part, also advised students to adequately utilise their time in school by developing specific skills that would make them marketable after school and guarantee them jobs.

He urged them to focus on developing themselves to be marketable after school.

Eight roles that will be critical

The World Economic Forum report also highlighted eight roles that will be critical in the near future and they are:

1. Data analysts

2. Computer and mathematical jobs

3. Architects and engineers

4. Salespeople

5. Senior managers

6. Product designers

7. HR and organisational development specialists

8. Regulatory and government relations experts.

Connect With Us : 0242202447 | 0551484843 | 0266361755 | 059 199 7513 |